Live Long and Well with Dr. Bobby
Let's explore how you can Live Long and Well with six evidence based pillars: exercise, good sleep, proper nutrition, mind-body activities, exposure to heat/cold, and social relationships. I am a physician scientist, Ironman Triathlete, and have a passion for helping others achieve their best self.
Live Long and Well with Dr. Bobby
#25: From Evidence to Action: A Dialogue with Health Coach Sean McDevitt
Take the Health Type Quiz
Knowing the science is important but implementing it is where the magic happens. Unlock the secrets to transforming your health by bridging the gap between evidence and action with insights from health coach Sean McDevitt.
Sean is a Health and Life Coach, Author of Hack Your Health, and Co-Founder of DLDNation which has helped over 5,000 individuals get fit sustainably.
In this episode, we'll discover how to turn knowledge into practice as we explore the key to setting and achieving manageable health goals. Sean brings his expertise to the table, offering strategies to overcome common barriers, while emphasizing the crucial 'why' behind health advice.
Together, we tackle the all-or-nothing mindset and highlight the power of self-compassion, drawing inspiration from Kobe Bryant's philosophy of focusing on the journey rather than just the destination.
We also explore how fitness can serve as a gateway to a more comprehensive wellness journey. Sean shares how clients often start with fitness and expand into other health domains like nutrition, sleep, and stress management.
We'll also learn the importance of experimenting with various wellness practices and the role of education and support in fostering lasting change.
By establishing baselines and conducting regular self-assessments, you'll be empowered to recognize patterns, make informed adjustments, and ultimately achieve a holistic approach to a healthier, more fulfilling life.
Time Stamps:
(2:30) First Interview On The Show
(3:20) Sean’s Background
(6:35) Avoiding Overwhelm
(7:20) Guiding Clients Through Roadblocks and The All Or Nothing Mindset
(10:50) Good vs Bad New Years Resolutions
(12:25) Being Processed Oriented
(14:05) Pushing Through Being Tired or Prioritize Sleep?
(19:30) Stress Relief Tactics
(20:56) Tracking Client Progress
(23:47) Sean’s Favorite Quotes
(26:14) Where To Find Sean
(27:00) Let Me Know If You Enjoyed This Episode
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Take My Health Archtype Quiz On My Website
If I missed a workout, then why track my macros? Why care about my hydration? Why try to get good sleep Because it doesn't matter anyway, when that's not the truth what I try to show my clients and for your listeners as well there are multiple ways to win quote, unquote when working towards optimal health.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Dr Bobby Du Bois and welcome. To Live Long and Well, a podcast where we will talk about what you can do to live as long as possible and with as much energy and vigor that you wish. Together, we will explore what practical and evidence-supported steps you can take. Come join me on this very important journey and I hope that you feel empowered along the way. I'm a physician, ironman, triathlete and have published several hundred scientific studies. I'm honored to be your guide. Welcome everyone to episode 25, from Evidence to Action, a dialogue with health coach Sean McDevitt.
Speaker 2:Now, as folks know, my episodes focus on what the evidence tells us about how we can live long and well. As examples you know, studies show that exercise reduces heart disease and overall mortality, and sauna can reduce our risk of dementia, and sleep impacts our general well-being. Well, what the studies show is step one, ah, but step two is the all-important one. The challenge is to implement what the studies show in our daily lives. Now we've talked about health type and how your type affects where health fits in your life, how you approach health decisions, how you might struggle with certain things and how you might respond when a health trigger occurs. Now, if you haven't taken the health quiz yet please do so. Just go to drbobbylivelongandwellcom. Also, if you have an interest in working directly with me, head to my website. Let me know what you need.
Speaker 2:Well, today I want to do something different. This is the first episode I've ever done where I'm going to have an interview somebody else to join us in this dialogue, and we're going to talk about that bridge, the all-important bridge between what evidence tells us and actually doing it. So I want to welcome and introduce Sean McDevitt, a fitness and life coach. Now his world lives in between what we know should help us and encouraging and supporting individuals to make those changes in their life. So a perfect person to have a dialogue around this. Now. Sean has served thousands as part of an online fitness and nutrition coaching company he owns with his wife, called DLD Nation. In addition to being a fitness and a nutrition coach, sean is a certified life coach, nearing a thousand hours of experience. Sean was a D1 athlete at the University of Georgia, holds an MBA from the University of Oregon and is the author of the bestselling book Hack your Health. Sean's coached thousands of individuals and learned, importantly, what does and what doesn't work. So welcome, sean, to Live Long and Well.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, bobby. I really appreciate being here and I'm honored to be your very first guest on the show.
Speaker 2:And we're going to have a lot of fun, which is the most important thing. Now, what I thought we would do for our audience is sort of do a point-counterpoint, talk a little bit about evidence, but then quickly turn towards how do we get people to follow the guidance that sometimes is clear now, sometimes it's not so clear. So we know that exercise helps us live long and well and, as we've talked about in prior episodes, there are really four key components of exercise there's the aerobic part, there's the strength part, there's balance and flexibility and then there's high intensity work. So the evidence is pretty clear that it reduces heart attacks, reduces mortality, reduces the risk of cognitive decline. But when the rubber meets the road, how do you, Sean, work with clients to actually make it happen?
Speaker 1:First off, I just want to reinforce what you said, Bobby. All of those four modalities play a role in our overall health, and I was a history major at the University of Georgia and going back into evolutionary biology, surprise, surprise, it's how we used to use our bodies Before we had smartphones and devices and distractions sitting in cars and at tables, we actually used our bodies in the ways, the four ways that you mentioned, and so for me, it's one providing that education for my clients. That's something that my wife and I pride ourselves on with our company is focusing on the why, right? Because sometimes, if one has a coach and they're told to do something, they're just sitting there shrugging, wondering, well, why am I actually doing this? And we want to put some more education behind it and I know that's a big part of what you do as well, for how we help our clients have the rubber meet the road, which I think is a great way to put it, is, first off, show them what's possible, and the example I use would be if somebody wanted to be an attorney, they might want to go to Harvard Law School, because Harvard Law School fields a lot of great legal departments. Same thing with medical right. They go to Stanford if they want to be a doctor, or if they want to play professional football, they might be going to Georgia or Ohio State and similar.
Speaker 1:And so what I'm grateful to say with what my wife and I do is we have literally, like you said, thousands of examples of clients seeing success not only in the aesthetics and the before and afters of their photos and their transformations physically, but also looking under the hood and getting those labs that show that there's changes in cholesterol, show that there's changes in these other factors that go into overall health.
Speaker 1:And so that's the first part is showing them what's possible, because there is a lot of doubt in the fitness industry of can I see the same success as the person that I'm seeing on Instagram, as the person that I'm seeing on Facebook or the friends that talk about it? The next part is we break it down into consumable chunks, because when we look at the macro, sometimes that can be overwhelming. Right, we get overwhelmed with everything that we have to do, versus breaking it down into okay, what goes into the high intensity training, what does that look like? And so that first part is showing our clients what's possible and then breaking it down to consumable chunks and then, like you said, bobby, guiding them along the way.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it sounds like a great formula. Here's the vision of what it can be for you. Here are bite-sized chunks and I'm going to guide you along the way. Sounds good Till the first roadblock. So maybe walk us through some of the common challenges that you run across and how you guide people through it. Oh, sean, I'm too busy. You know, I got three kids at home, I got a busy career, et cetera, et cetera. Or you know, whatever it else that is, that kind of gets in the way of what those three guideposts are for you.
Speaker 1:That's a great question and the overarching answer would be people typically fall prey to the all or nothing mindset and I know that that was my main hurdle, or speed bump as well that if I missed a workout, then why track my macros, why care about my hydration, why try to get good sleep Because it doesn't matter anyway, when that's not the truth. What I try to show my clients and for your listeners as well, there are multiple ways to win, quote unquote, when working towards optimal health, and so, in that example, if we miss a workout, we can still take advantage of our nutrition, we can still make sure we hit our 10,000 steps, we can still get our good sleep, we can still have a mindfulness practice, because that all plays a role. What bleeds out of that all or nothing mindset is people have a tendency of beating ourselves up, and that's the negativity bias that our brains have right, where we immediately go to the negative. Thousands of years ago, evolutionary biology that made sense, right, because we had to worry about the lions and tigers and bears oh my, outside the cave in which we lived. Fast forward to 2024,. Our brains have not upgraded the software and so it still thinks it's in this fight or flight scenario and has to think negatively. And so that's what I've noticed training thousands of clients is that when they make a misstep they fall prey to that all or nothing mindset and then they start beating themselves up. And so to your point earlier of hey Sean, this sounds great, you know consumable chunks and you're going to guide me, but now I hit a road bump. It's recognizing for my clients what that road bump is and showing them how they can get around it with still being kind to themselves.
Speaker 1:And what I really like working with my clients on and you kind of alluded to this with the archetypical busy parent who has three kids I'm working a job, I don't have a lot of time To me and please forgive the sports analogies that's playing with what the defense is giving me. So I love when a client says hey, sean, I'm so busy, I have all these things going on. How do I even approach this? There isn't an all or nothing mindset to that client. What I mean by that is if a client has 30 minutes and I was just talking to a client about this literally before our podcast if a if a client has, hey, how much time do you have, client, I have 30 minutes to get in the gym Awesome, let's work with those 30 minutes. I will customize a workout that works for you. Whatever you get done, you get done. I just want you maintaining that routine, maintaining that habit, maintaining that habit.
Speaker 1:They may ask how do I stick to my nutrition because I have the cakes and cookies and candies in the office kitchen? Well, let's meal prep. How do we do that? Help guide them through that. If they're making just a few meals a week, that's going to be a huge impact, statistically speaking, on what they're eating overall. And so for me and yes, I wrote a book called Hack your Health it's finding those hacks. It's finding those cheat codes to make everything that goes with health actually executable.
Speaker 2:Makes perfect sense, all right. So it's that time of year. Very soon we're going to start thinking about New Year's resolutions and I'm actually going to do a whole podcast about a different way to approach it. But I wanted to get a sense from you In your experience coaching people. January 1st comes around. They've gained weight during the holidays, they drank too much, slept too little and they know they got to do something. So they have all these wonderful visions for the new year. What are good New Year's resolutions and what ones are kind of likely to fail.
Speaker 1:I'm going to break rapport with your audience. The goals of I'm going to lose X number of pounds is going to fail. It's because it's too macro. The person and I would encourage all of your listeners to start now and not wait until the first of the year. That's also going to give them a little bit of a leg up on everybody else who waited. But that overarching goal of I want to get fit, I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to lose 20 pounds, that's going to fail in my opinion, in my experience, because there is no how, versus that person who says I want to commit to at least three days in the gym, I want to commit to tracking my macros, I want to commit to getting a cold plunge, trying this out for a few days a week and seeing how that impacts my life. When we have those tangible goals that there's actually steps to, then all of a sudden we actually see success, versus being overwhelmed by this big goal that doesn't have an approach or a path to success.
Speaker 2:So are you saying that, rather than focus on the goal as an end point? Lose this number of pounds. My body fat will look like this I'll get so much amount of sleep that, in fact, you're focused on the process, which is get to the gym twice a week. I don't care what you do, it's better than zero times a week. Do you give it more of a process focus? Is that more sustainable and successful?
Speaker 1:It's what all of the successful people before us have talked about. In any discipline, it's the journey. I'm a huge Kobe Bryant fan. I know we can speak to this because you and I used to live in Los Angeles and he has a great speech to his daughters when his Jersey is being retired and at the end of that I would encourage anyone to check it out, especially those of us who are parents. He talks about, he looks to his girls in front of everybody at what was then Staples Center and he points to the banners and he says those weren't really the goal. The Jersey is hanging mine two of them that are hanging.
Speaker 1:That's not really the goal. The goal is coming in and training when you don't feel like it, finding out how much of a reservoir of energy you actually have when you're tired, committing to the people around you, your family, your community. And it's that journey to your point, bobby, that speaks to those individual pieces, that then gets you to the goal. Right, there's a great quote and I might be butchering it, but the person who enjoys walking is going to go farther than the person who's focused on the destination, and it's the same thing in our life and health.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, we're in another minute or two we're going to move beyond fitness to the broader aspects of health and wellness. But when you were chatting, I had this sort of question that popped into my head that people have asked me and I have my standard answer, but I want to hear what yours is. This, obviously, we hadn't talked about before, so this will be completely spontaneous. So one of your clients comes to you and says oh my God, I got almost. You know it's 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock at night. I it's time for me to go to bed and I'm supposed to get up. It's I was supposed to get up at six in the morning to get to the gym, but if I do that I'm not going to get very much sleep. So which is it better to get a better night's sleep or say, forget the sleep, I'm getting to the gym? What do you guide them to do?
Speaker 1:That's a great question. I would love to hear your answer as well. So my overall answer would be nuanced. The umbrella answer would be get your sleep, because you can't make up the sleep, most likely, but you can probably make up the workout. You might even be able to make up the workout at your lunch period. You might be able to make up the workout after work or you can shift it to another day.
Speaker 1:I had a client recently who was actually under the weather and she did just that. She was like, I think, on this Monday. Sean, it would behoove me to get more sleep to recover and she moved her workout. She might have to do two workouts in a row or whatever, and mess with her schedule a little bit, but it's possible. The nuanced approach I might say is is there a way to do both? Is there a way to cut your workout to, like I said, maybe 30 minutes versus the 60 or 90, get more sleep and still try to do both? However, if one was asking me for a black and white answer, it would be to get sleep and you can make up the workout later. I'd be curious. Your answer.
Speaker 2:I have the exact same answer and studies really have looked at this issue of what happens if you lose sleep on a night or two or three, and then you quote make it up on the weekends, which is a very common scenario on a whole host of measures, whether it's memory issues or learning new skills. You cannot make up sleep. During sleep, you're flushing out toxins, you're doing various things. You cannot undo it. So extra sleep on the weekend doesn't undo it. On the other hand, as you say, you can do an extra workout, you can work a little bit longer. So, given a choice between your exercise and your sleep, I think we're both in agreement Get your sleep, we'll get the fitness stuff back on track another day.
Speaker 1:I just want to add something quickly to that. To that point, bobby, we have a check-in template for our clients and we look at the averages. So, for instance, with working to get 10K steps, it's the average right. Or to our hydration it's the average. What I typically say to clients. Let's say one day they get 15K steps, hey, don't worry about the next day, you don't have to get 10K, you can be a little bit lower if you need to recover, because we're working on the average. When it comes to sleep, my refrain is typically that's okay in steps, that might be okay in hydration, but for sleep I want that to be consistent every day as closely as possible. Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Completely agree. As my listeners know, my pillar number one of the six pillars is fitness and exercise, but there are five other pillars and I now want to switch gears and begin to talk about not just fitness coaching but the broader health coaching that you do and you're transitioning increasingly towards. You mentioned to me that fitness is almost the gateway drug. If you can get people to begin the excitement around being more fit, they naturally want to pursue some of these other things. And those other things, as we've talked about so far, is sleep, but also nutrition, mind-body harmony, exposure to heat and cold, eaten cold and social relationships. So when you have clients that say you know, sean, I'm ready to, to expand my understanding of health and wellness and go beyond exercise, can you guide me in that regard? Well, what triggers that transition? What is it? Does it have to be? Well, my sister just got diagnosed with heart disease and I don't want that to happen to me. What else can I do? What is it that triggers this broader appreciation?
Speaker 1:How I typically answer that question, bobby, is through fitness people are able to realize what they can actually accomplish, because and this is me pontificating I think often in life many of us are sleepwalking or we're following somebody else's ideas. I know for my generation it was hey, get good grades, go to school, go to college, you can get a good job. And through that path one might not be actually focusing on what they really want to do. They're just kind of taking the steps that other people prescribed for them and then they wonder why they are overweight and they don't like the relationships, they don't like their job and they're unhappy. Fitness, like you said, is a gateway drug because it's very easy to touch on the metrics, because someone can start a fitness journey with me and over time they can visibly see the changes in their physique, they can visibly see the changes on the scale, they can see how much more weight they can lift than they did previously. And that success in one modality of life enlightens them to these other areas, which I love because, like you said previously, I'm doing more life coaching while also fitness coaching and I've seen success with blurring the lines Before I used to keep them separate and with many clients. I'll ask because I want to get their consent to bring in some of the life coaching stuff. But as and everyone says yes, and as they see their success in fitness, they start to ask the other relevant questions Well, what do you do?
Speaker 1:What's your mindfulness practice? Do you do cold plunge? What else do you do in your life? What reading do you do? What content do you consume? Right, and so it's allowing them to come to their own conclusions once they see the success with fitness, while also making little suggestions. For instance, one example is with all of our clients, we have a stress relief modality that we like to recommend and we have a ton listed. We have journaling, gratitude practice, meditation, breath work, cold plunge, sauna. What I say to clients is you don't have to do all of these. If you would like, you can. That may be several hours of your morning, of your day, and I have friends who do all of them to the tune of several hours in the morning. However, I would love for my clients to try each of them.
Speaker 1:And I'm happy to give them little five to 10 minute examples and all of those different disciplines I mentioned and then one that resonates with them. Stick with it for a month, let's work on it together and see the results and, much like in fitness, they start to see the results in their other aspects of life and of course that encourages them to continue.
Speaker 2:Well, when you talk about results, so my listeners will know that I'm very fond of the end of one approach. If your sleep is not working, then do some sort of baseline assessment. It could be an aura ring or a Fitbit or just a self questionnaire of you know how many hours of sleep did I get and do I feel sleepy this morning? And then try something new. Maybe let's lower the temperature in your bedroom, see if that helps you. Let's reduce alcohol Don't eat so late in the evening and then retest and see what goes on. So how do you monitor your client's progress? Are there any sort of best practices that you might share with others?
Speaker 1:Similarly to what you do with your clients, bobby. We set a baseline, and so when we have a client, start with me and us at our company. We'll have them fill out a questionnaire that speaks to, okay, yes, the height, weight, age, but also digestion. Also, what do you do in your free time? What do your social relationships look like? What are your commitments outside of fitness look like? How would you like to be coached? Right, what resonates with you? And so we take all of that intake to provide a baseline and then, going forward, we have weekly check-ins and in those weekly check-ins, in the template, I look at how often they're training, their intensity, their macros, sleep steps, hydration, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:What's awesome about being a coach is I can see that 30,000 foot view or that 60,000 foot view, right, and I can also enlighten my clients to what's going on. So, for instance, I had a client recently who, um, he had been on this great streak of weight loss and then something happened. And here we were a week ago and he's like sean I don't know what's going on like I can't seem to get the motor running again. What's awesome is he checks in every week and he gives me all the data in that template, because that bio feedback is data right, and I can use it to make more informed decisions. So when a client, like you said earlier, is consistent with when they go to sleep, they're consistent when they wake up and they're consistent with what they eat, how they train, then we can tell if something's out of whack. Right, if there's a unique variable, like, okay, let's change the temperature in your room, just do that one thing and let's see if that works. If it does, great, if it doesn't, we'll try something else. But the client is giving me consistent data every week that I can make decisions on.
Speaker 1:So this client previously who said, sean, I don't know a roadblock, I looked back at his last four months and I could see that, leading into November, he was, on top of it, consistent, all of his workouts, whatnot. And then, like so many of us, you hit Thanksgiving and he had family in town, he was traveling, he had a girl in school and college. He was going to visit her, and so I was able to show him. Hey, during this period of Q4, the holidays which trip up so many of us you were just talking about those who maybe eat, drink, they're a little bit more merry than others over this time of year.
Speaker 1:Well, hey, that's the impact, it's not the client as an individual, because he had this great hot streak, it's all these trips, all of these holidays, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just recognizing oh, that's what tripped me up. So if I can, maybe in the new year stay more consistent, that's what tripped me up. So if I can maybe in the new year stay more consistent, less trips, less partying, then I'm probably going to see more success. But it's only by one, establishing that baseline, and then two, getting that data every week, keeping track of it, to then be able to inform the client in such a way.
Speaker 2:Makes perfect sense. Anything on the coaching arena that I haven't asked, that you would like to add to the dialogue.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate that. I took some notes off of your and my conversation prior to the podcast meeting for the podcast, and one other reason that I well, a couple of things that I wanted to mention are favorite quotes and these may resonate with your audience. One is awareness precedes change. A great example of this is, I imagine, everyone in our life there was a time where we didn't want to look at our bank account. We were scared of our finances. We were maybe living in a dorm and we were trying to pay for the ramen. However, once we got into our finances and this is something I do with my life coaching clients we typically find money in the proverbial seat cushions. In my experience, it's to the tune of about $300 per month of oh man, I'm going to Starbucks a little bit too much. Or like, oh, I need to rein in that spending, I'm going out a little bit too much.
Speaker 1:But the awareness of what was going on in our bank account preceded change.
Speaker 1:And I know this is what you do, bobby, with your clients making them aware of their tendencies, their habits, their routines, and then they decide if they want to change it.
Speaker 1:Another great quote is if you can measure it, you can manage it, and I know it may sound daunting to touch on all these variables that you and I have been talking about, but starting slowly with my clients and just doing it over time, I allow them to see that they can actually measure and manage more aspects of their life in and out of fitness by simply looking at it in a similar way as academics or business.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating to me, bobby, that in academics and business we track everything there's monthly meetings, there's quarterly goals, whatever, what have you and then in our personal life we're just throwing stuff against the wall hoping that it sticks, when, in actuality, if we take some of that previous thought in business, academics and sports, for instance, and apply it to our personal life and our fitness, then we will also see success. And so I really like showing my clients that they can see a lot of success in fitness, and then that bleeds out to the rest of your lives. And so maybe it's another podcast for you and me, but I've seen a lot of clients once they see success in fitness and I'm talking, I have clients who are down 50, 60, sometimes over 100 pounds and they see what's possible in their fitness life and now all of a sudden they want to change their career. They recognize that maybe their relationship wasn't the greatest for them and they start changing other aspects of their life, using fitness again as that gateway drug.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic, Sean. It has been great chatting with you. You know it's easy for me to get stuck in my ivory tower, review the science, summarize it and share it with folks, but to have a chance to hear about what it really takes to get folks moving in the direction that we all want them to, this is wonderful, and thank you for sharing your insights into how you're truly helping people live long and well. If folks want to continue the conversation with you, how might they connect?
Speaker 1:First off, thank you again so much for having me on the show, bobby. This was a ton of fun and I really appreciate being able to talk about these shared passions of ours. I would love to connect with people on Instagram. That's the main way that I get content out and talk to followers and clients. My Instagram is at fitness shaman yes, there are three S's in the middle of that and following me that name will make sense. Otherwise, you can check out what my wife and I's company, dld nation, does at DLD nation or at dldnationcom.
Speaker 2:Well, I will definitely include it in the show notes so folks can find you and reach out as they wish. Now this is my first interview format my listening audience. Please let me know whether you liked it, what you liked about it, how I can do better, because I always want to do better. And until next time, I hope you all continue on the journey to live long and well and perhaps perhaps a coach may be in your future. Thanks so much for listening to Live Long and Well with Dr Bobby. If you liked this episode, please provide a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you want to continue this journey or want to receive my newsletter on practical and scientific ways to improve your health and longevity, please visit me at drbobblivelongandwellcom. That's, doctor, as in D-R Bobby. Live long and well dot com.